- UGO ATTARDI ARTWORKS

- UGO ATTARDI PAINTER

Hugh Attardi was a Italian painter and sculptor from '900.

He was born in Sori, a town near Genoa, in 1923. His father was a trade unionist and a leading figure in the Federation of Seafarers. The family soon moved to Palermo, where the father was born, and it was there that Ugo Attardi began to take an interest in painting. Already from his early youth he manifested a strong passion for art which led him first to attend the art school in Palermo and later, in 1941, to enroll in the Faculty of Architecture, but due to the war he would not be able to graduate.

In 1945 he goes to Rome and remains a guest of Renato Guttuso It is Peter Consagra. In the following years he was lucky enough to meet other figures of high value in the artistic sector such as Mino Guerrini It is Achilles Perilli, with which he will start an artistic movement of abstract style. The post-war climate, full of stimuli and a desire for change, led him to form and realize himself in his art.

It will be the fifties to determine a turning point: he decides to direct his gaze towards theexpressionism and chooses to participate actively in politics by offering his commitment to the Communist Party. It will be the desire to seek novelty that will lead him to move away from abstractionism to experiment with his own vision of expressionism.

For two years, in 1952 and 1956, Ugo Attardi was invited to exhibit at the Venice Biennale and in Trastevere with great success, probably also helped by the crisis of realism that crept into the art galleries.

In the 60s, after a trip to Spain, he began to develop a passion for classics and historical studies. This new research of his will lead him to realize the Drapellone of the Palio of Siena. In these years Ugo Attardi traveled a lot abroad and exhibited his works all over the world. Participates in national and international exhibitions in Paris, London, Moscow, New York.

In Rome he will found together with other young artists the Pros and the Cons: a movement that arises from the pure need to go beyond and overcome abstractionism, proposing a figurative painting.

In the following years he will receive various awards for his work: in 1971 he also won a fiction prize with his "The Heir and the Wild".

In the eighties, however, he will be honored with two exhibitions in his honor in Milan and Ferrara.

At the end of the 1960s he will begin the creation of numerous sculptures including the bas-relief "Goodbye Che Guevara" of 1968. In this period he will also start working with wood by making "The Arrival of Pizarro" or, among the bronze works, the enigmatic and sensual work "La Maga".

In the early seventies, however, he created public works, such as the group "The Vessel of the Revolution" as a tribute to France by the Italian Government for the bicentenary of the storming of the Bastille.

The nineties saw the birth of two of his most famous works including The lords of the Norman, which he created in 1992 for the Palermo airport, e Ulysses, located in the greenery of Battery Park in New York.

In 2000, Ugo Attardi participates in the premiere Biennial of contemporary Italian engraving held in Campobasso at Palazzo d'Ovidio. In the same year he will exhibit an anthological exhibition at Borges Center of Buenos Aires, in Argentina.

In the following years he gave Pope John Paul II a monumental sculpture called The Christ which today it is possible to visit in the Vatican museums.

In 2004, to celebrate the entry of the Republic of Malta into the European Union, the monumental sculpture was placed Aeneas in the port of Valletta in Malta.

In 2006, the day after his death, the city greeted him with a public ceremony which was also attended by many artists, writers, poets and critics. A year later the titled work is exhibited Brightness al Royal Palace in Milan and in conjunction with the anniversary of the death of his beloved Pope, an exhibition in his honor was inaugurated at the Casa d'Arte Ulisse in Rome.

For Ugo Attardi works of art had a particular purpose, that is make appearance. In this case, the term "appearance" has the meaning of both "appearance" and "semblance". And he wanted to give his own and autonomous life to his art.

Ugo Attardi died in 2006 in Rome at the age of 83.